Road Hazards II

If you live in lower Delaware and you've ever purchased crushed clamshells for your garden or driveway, you may want to invest in a metal detector:

Laurel poultry grower Bill Layton said he checked his driveway after reading a newspaper account Wednesday about vintage hand grenades found in a clamshell-paved driveway about seven miles away.

He walked outside his Layton Road home shortly after 9 a.m. and noticed the top of a gray object embedded in the crushed clamshells covering his driveway.

Poking around, Layton retrieved a rusted grenade about 40 feet from his back door.

He called police.

"That's what scares the hell out of me," said Layton, 45. "We've been riding over them all winter."

State police spokesman Cpl. Jeff Oldham said ordnance disposal team members recovered 14 assorted vintage rifle and hand grenades on the property. Wednesday's cache, the second ordnance recovery in the past five days, included 10 World War I French rifle grenades, two British Mills hand grenades, one World War II-era pineapple-style Mark II grenade and "an unknown type of ordnance," Oldham said.

The weapons, which were turned over to Dover Air Force Base ordnance specialists for analysis and destruction, bring to 55 the number of vintage explosives found around Sussex County since late February.